TO THE EDGE || dual introduction

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Ninazu stalked silently through the evergreen forest. As she drew closer, she caught snippets of the conversation and saw the canines through the pine’s needles. The smells of their picnic and body language hinted to their purpose of waiting on the Coalition’s territory, so Ninazu supposed it would be rude to crash upon them in all her glory.

Twigs snapped under her feet. Her tail thwacked a cypress’s trunk as she passed. She consciously rippled the bioluminescence in her feathers, drawing the eye to look at the cosmos hiding in the forest.

All so when she stepped forward, the two canines wouldn’t be surprised. Most of the dinosaurs Ninazu had encountered were feral beasts incapable of reason or rational thought—she wouldn’t have been surprised if the two strangers had the same experiences.

Yet she still snapped her jaws. A sickle claw tap-tap-tapped as an instinct fired from the smell of prey. If her assessment of their friendliness was wrong, well, she wouldn’t leave their corpses to rot on the border like she would’ve during her reign as the Pitt’s ardent.

“And I am Ninazu Malus, a warlord–a rank capable of accepting joiners into the Coalition of the Condemned.” Her friendly tone contrasted sharply with the excitement betrayed by the sickle claw—perhaps anyone watching had simply imagined it? “Am I wrong about your intentions?”

© MADI